


The Distance Between Two Bodies

by landrews



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, F/M, Porn With Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 04:38:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/landrews/pseuds/landrews
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been three weeks since Doyle died. Angel's trying to figure out the purpose of a certain object he recovered from Doyle's apartment. Cordelia tries to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Distance Between Two Bodies

**Author's Note:**

> Set Season One, between 'Parting Gifts' and 'Somnambulist' 
> 
> Written for the October 2008 Truth Or Dare Challenge at ca_atlast from spikes_cj 's Truth prompt of "rain, magic, kiss, with 'storm' as a theme".
> 
> Disclaimer: Whedon's, Greenwalt, Mutant Enemy's ect.
> 
> A/N: I have always wondered at the odd little interaction between Angel and Cordelia during 'Expecting' when Serena reveals that Cordy's been dating- and Angel wants to know why she hadn't told him. Yeah, that scene, the one where they're whispering and he has the funny little half-sick smile on his face? And she kinda beds that guy tentatively and then she just wants to wake up? Yeah. Here's the reason why. 
> 
> Cordy still blowing Wes off at the start of 'Somnambulist', her defense of Angel, and the C/A deep friendship talk at the end lend themselves nicely to taking place after this fic.

 

 

Cordelia looked up from filing her nails as Angel's bulk filled his office doorway. He put his hands in his pockets and leaned on the frame, staring past her, out the front window into the grey afternoon. The weak sunlight filtering through the steady rain wavered over every surface. Shadows filled the hollows of Angel's cheeks and the depths of his eyes under their hood of brow. He looked like the ghost of a black and white screen star. Cordelia sighed.

“Where's Wesley?” she said. She had thought he was cloistered with Angel.

“Sent him out for books.”

Cordelia set her file down and closed her magazine. She didn't have to ask why. Wesley Wyndham-Pryce had adopted them, and while she was happy to have her eyes, thanks to him, the energy he bounced off the walls of Angel's small space wasn't something she or Angel was used to. Yet. “He's kinda like an overenthusiastic puppy we didn't want. We'll get used to him.”

Angel nodded, the rain shifting across his face.

“I miss him, too,” Cordelia said. It had been three weeks since Doyle died, but she knew Angel.

He ducked his chin, but just continued to stand there, all broody and frowning at the storm.

Thunder rumbled. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand- lightning flickered out, licking the air like a tongue. She just had time to head down the street to the Bean and Leaf for latte. She got up, sliding her file into the drawer, and started to ask him if he wanted anything.

Still looking at the floor, he said, “Come look at this,” and turned away. 

Curious, she followed him into his office. He was seated already, turning a rock over in his hands. She sat herself down across from him and he placed the rock down in front of her. It was about the size of both her fists, grey and irregular with little sparkly flecks embedded in it. The bottom was flattened. She picked it up, surprised at its heaviness compared to its size. 

“It's a rock,” she said.

“I went to Doyle's, before the funeral. Just to check around, take anything that maybe shouldn't fall into other hands. Found a spell book, and some amulets, and that.”

“A rock?”

Angel shook his head. “Turn it over.”

Tiny, elaborate flourishes of Latin script filled the flattened bottom, side to side and like a kind of thin hologram, seeming to hover above the first layer, a second layer was written top to bottom and... in between? At all the wrong angles. “How...?”

“I don't know. Wesley doesn't either.” 

“Why didn't you tell me you had something of Doyle's?”

Angel tapped his fingers on the desk top and then closed the open book lying in front of him. “I doubt it was his, Cordelia.” 

Deciding to let it go, Cordelia shook the rock. Angel snorted, but when she quick looked up at him, his face was carefully blank, and his lips even. She tapped it on the edge of his desk, and then passed one hand over it. She peered at Angel when he grunted and caught the corner of his lip twitching. 

“Abracadabra,” she said in a commanding tone. “Open sesame.”

“I didn't think of that,” Angel said. Cordelia thought his voice sounded Caribbean sea blue when he was amused. Warm and cool all swirled together.

She grinned at him and shrugged, handing the rock back to him when he leaned forward, hand outstretched. As their fingers brushed, the layers of script unfolded, opening up side by side, hovering over the stone surface. Cordy drew her hand back and they snapped closed again.

“Touch it again,” Angel murmured.

She did. With both of them touching the rock, the words blossomed once more.

“Rotate it.”

Together, they inched it around until it was right side around to Angel. His lips moved as he read the Latin to himself. “It's dialogue,” he said, mystified. “I think it's meant to be read by lovers, the paragraphs alternating.”

“A love spell?”

“No. Maybe. It's a poem.”

Cordelia craned her neck, trying to see the script better. “Which is the woman's part?”

“Um, lovers... it's not really, um, gender specific.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe the 'devoted' is a better term than lovers. The first lines are the uh, principal's and the next are the devotee's.”

“Dom and sub?”

He glanced up, through his lashes. “Master and slave?”

After a second, Cordelia remembered to breathe. “Read it.”

Angel stared at her, his dark eyes unreadable. Without looking down, he began to speak, keeping his voice low. The language was melodius. 

“That's not Latin,” Cordy said.

“I think it's a dialect of Deflectic, an old demon language close to Sumerian. The way it was written in the sixteenth and seventeenth century looked like Latin, but doesn't sound like it.” His lips twisted. “I can't translate much of it, maybe Wesley can, now that I can write it down for him.”

“Well, buster,” Cordy said as she moved her hand and the text folded on itself again. “I hope I don't fall hopelessly for the next guy I see. I already owe Doyle for giving me his 'gift'.”

Angel turned the rock, apparently watching the text ripple. “If it's anything, it's a binding spell.”

“Binding? Why'd you read it out loud?”

He lowered the rock and smiled at her.

She raised her brows.

“It's fine, Cordy. It'd only work if we read our respective parts.” His eyes wandered to some place over her shoulder. “I think.”

Cordelia stood. “You think?”

Angel followed her as she left the office. “Nothing happened, it's fine.”

“I'm going for a latte.” She snagged her purse from the chair in front the desk. “You want...”

Lightning ripped the room bright. A shotgun blast of thunder made the windows blinds shudder and Cordelia jump. Angel's hands closed on her upper arms so fast that it all seemed to happen at once. She fell against his chest, and then his arms were around her.

Rain hammered down, louder than Cordelia had ever heard it in the sheltered little office. Lighting struck again, close by. Although she expected the immediate crack of boom, she flinched. When it passed, a strange reverberation still thrummed in her cheek. She pulled away from Angel's loose embrace.

He was laughing at her. It was understated and very Angel, not more than a long chuckle by any one else's standards, more in his eyes than his face...

She watched him lean in. Her eyes closed as his lips met hers. They were as soft as last week, when she had kissed him in a desperate attempt to pass on her visions, but this time, they were yielding and moist. Hands on her waist, he drew her in closer. He teased her, running his tongue along the part of her lips. It tickled. She opened her mouth and he deepened the kiss, exploring her mouth ever so softly.

He tasted of cherry Cabernet and coffee. Her whole mouth tingled as his tongue slid over hers and brushed the roof of her mouth. The sensation swirled down, looping into her chest and belly and making her press against him. The muscles of his neck and chest bunched under her palms as he turned her. 

Easy as a waltz, her hips fitted to his, his coiled energy a magnet for hers, they flowed across the office until she felt the slatted elevator door at her back. His confidence, the cool furnace of his mouth, the caress of his long fingers over her shoulders, lingering at the rounded sides of her aching to be touched breasts, firmly stroking her flanks and the curve of her bottom... she wanted him as part of her- deeper, harder, hotter.

Angel snaked one arm around her lower back and jerked her tight to him as he fumbled for the cage door and flung it back. Without breaking their kiss he backed her into the elevator, and slapped at the button to take them down. They jostled the short distance, not able to get enough of each other. At the bottom, Angel slapped at the door, scooped her up and hustled her across his darkened den. 

Cordelia kissed his neck, breathing in the lingering scent of his coconut shaving cream. He smelled heavenly, and tasty. She caught his skin between her teeth and he groaned. He dropped her on his bed, which was soft and not so big, but smelled like him, his real odor, earthy and complex, with depths of layer she'd never suss out. 

Her heated skin felt too tight. She needed him. Cordelia sat up and tugged at her blazer. Angel stripped his shirt off and stepped out of his pants before she'd even gotten one button on her blouse released. He placed a knee on the bed between her legs, took her blouse in both hands and neatly yanked it open. Buttons pattered onto the hard wood floor and bounced off her breasts.

“Better,” he said.

“Faster,” she said.

In seconds, her bra sailed away through the air and he was settling his skin on hers, his hard cock lodged firmly at her center, separated only by her panties and his blue, silk boxers. She wrapped her legs around his thighs and sighed. They were satisfied for one short moment. But then Cordelia wriggled, holding him tight over her swollen mound. He took possession of her neck with open-mouthed kisses. When he reached her ear, he whispered, “Slower.”

She shook her head in protest, and bucked her hips, but he only weighed her down, to still her, and found her mouth again. He kissed her into oblivion and then worked his way down her neck. Just when her brain caught up, Angel licked her right nipple, spiraled a wet line around the other and then sucked it up hard. She gasped and kicked, clutching at his shoulders. 

He laughed. The vibration down his body made her arch her back, wanting more of him. Angel thrust against her, slowly, and then moved onward. He trailed searing kisses down her belly, his fingertips tip-toeing feather-light over her scar, until his feet were on the floor and his lovely, skilled mouth reached the place she most wanted him. 

He laid one hand on her quivering belly. She jumped at his first, tentative taste of her. Running her fingers over the hard-soft crunch of his gelled hair, Cordelia willed herself to relax. She traced the rise and fall of his skull, let her thumbs trace his temples and eyebrows. He raised his head, and she felt his closed lids, his breath on her palm as she stoked his cheeks. She lifted her head to look at him between her straddled legs, just as he looked at her. 

“Angel,” she breathed.

He turned his face and kissed her palm, and then he set her on fire, and at the peak, rose and took her in a heated rush that made her shout as she strained to meet him, together finding that rare, vaunted spiritual rise into the stratosphere.

Sometime much later, the sweat on her skin prickling as it dried, Cordelia became aware of Angel's stillness beneath her cheek, his lack of heartbeat. She sat up, pushing her hair off her face. He stirred, and caressed her back. He said, “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“That knocking.”

She cocked her head, to listen better, wondering if someone was knocking on the door upstairs. “Maybe it's Wesley.”

“Hmm. We didn't lock the door.” He rolled up, out of bed and onto his bare feet in one motion.

Cordelia looked at him. He was cut in all the right places, but with just the right touch of soft in his eyes, and on his belly. Even his boy parts were pretty, which, in her limited experience, was unusual. They hung enticingly- full, but soft. 

Moisture surged between her legs. Sudden, unexplainable grief gripped her heart. She reached out and caught him in her hand. Angel sunk back toward her, hardening in her hand. Her skin woke up, all over, as he came closer. But he stopped, a crease appearing between his brows until he was frowning, his eyes taking on a distant look as he listened.

His gaze focused on her. Angel searched her face, as if he'd never really seen her before. He cupped one of her breasts and placed a small kiss on the nipple, then kissed her firmly on the mouth and straightened up. “Something's... 

 

************

 

“...wrong,” he said.

Doyle's rock thudded down onto the desk top between them. Angel's chair crashed to the ground as he left it in a blur of motion that thudded into the source of a tremendous pounding that hurt Cordelia's ears. She clapped her hands over them. Her eyes and nose burned from a noxious smoke in the air and she sneezed, then sneezed again, as Angel's and Wesley's angry voices tangled and fought.

“...gambling...no...Victorian...it does...Wes...time...lovers game...no...only works on true...why...spell...no...only true...”

“Stop!” she yelled. “Stop it.”

They stopped their noise, both their blurry faces turned her direction. She uncovered her ears to swipe at her eyes and nose. “What is that?” she gasped.

“A counter spell,” Wesley squeaked. His throat was blocked by Angel's hand across it. Their faces were inches apart, and if Wesley hadn't had the height advantage, and Angel been caught off guard, Cordy thought his feet would be dangling.

Angel was pissed, an ugly grimace fixed on his face. Cordelia flushed, feeling the ghost of his touch down her neck, the press of his tongue against her... She stood.

“I have to go,” she said. 

She ran out. Early evening sun striped the reception room red. Her shoulder bag still lay on the chair in front of her desk. She snatched at it, wondering if the storm that had set them off had been as fake as all the rest of it. 

The recorded pounding of some very large monster drum died in Angel's office.

“Wait,” Angel said.

Something in his voice stopped her. Maybe longing? Maybe pain. Her heart ached and she wanted to cry. She swallowed and took a deep breath, but couldn't force herself to face him. 

“I'm sorry, Cordelia,” he said. He was just behind her, so close, his breath brushed her ear.

“Did you know?”

“No. I figured it was a lover's spell, a sort of game, but I didn't think...” He paused. Cordelia was afraid that he would touch her but he didn't. “We didn't say it together. And we're not...”

“So we didn't...” make like lovers, she didn't say. 

“We didn't what?”

She turned, but kept her eyes on his chest. Just moments ago, she'd been lying there. She taken him in her hands. She could still feel him inside her. “Was it just a fantasy?”

He raised his hand very slowly, being careful with her. He touched her jaw, and sliding his finger under her chin, tilted her face up. His eyes were dark. And hungry. “Yes. Different ones, I suspect.”

“Oh.” She hadn't considered that. “Are you wearing blue silk boxers?”

His eyebrows shot up. 

“Not that that means you were there, uh, in mine,” she stammered.

“Of course not,” Angel said. “You, um, have a, um, small birthmark on your, um, right...?”

Cordelia's stomach tried crawling into her throat. “No. I don't have a birthmark on my right anything,” she lied.

Angel looked unconvinced. And worried. And like his dog had just died. He nodded. “Okay,” he agreed, and dropped his hand. He stepped past and opened the door for her. “You all right?”

“I'm meeting Serena tonight.” If it wasn't answering his question, at least it wasn't another lie. “We're going dancing.”

“Be careful, Cordelia.”

“Have fun,” Wesley added from across the room, and then coughed. He waved away the stinky herbal smoke still wafting from the office.

Cordelia rolled her eyes and stalked out as regally as her throbbing clit and wet panties allowed. She could swear she heard Angel growl as the door clicked shut behind her. 

Out on the wet street, it took her three tries to get her car open. Thunder grumbled way off in the distance. She slid behind the wheel and let the tears come.

 

 


End file.
